John Aubrey: My Own Life (48 page)

. . .

12 June

Yesterday I came
²¹
to Chedzoy, near Bridgwater, to meet Mr Paschall’s friend who is rector here. They have a scheme afoot to operate some lead mines in the Mendips – I thought perhaps this scheme might mend my fortunes. But alas! More menacing plots and plotters thwart me. I arrived here on the very night the Duke of Monmouth, the late King’s bastard son, landed at Lyme Regis to begin his rebellion. Monmouth’s soldiers entered the house and came into my chamber as I lay in bed. They took away horses and arms.

. . .

July

After his landing at Lyme Regis, the Duke of Monmouth collected a following of 3,000 men and was proclaimed King at Taunton. From there he went to Bristol, but the city shut its gates on him, so he retired to Bridgwater. Government forces were encamped nearby at Sedgemoor. There was fierce battle on the evening of 5 July, after which Monmouth fled. He was captured on Shag Heath and is now being held at the house of my old friend Anthony Ettrick (Recorder and Magistrate of Poole and Wimborne), from whence he will be sent to trial. Deo Gratias that storm cloud is over-blown!

. . .

August

I hope to find out
²²
from Sir William Dugdale when glass painting was first used in England.

I have heard
²³
William Dugdale say that although Mr Camden has the better reputation, the antiquary Mr Robert Glover was the best Herald of the College of Arms. He took a great deal of pains in searching out the antiquities of several counties, participating in heraldic visitations in the north of England especially.

. . .

September

I have quarrelled furiously with my tiger brother William over money.

. . .

I cannot read
²⁴
or write for grief! I cannot go to Salisbury to search out answers to Mr Wood’s questions. My brother and I are at such a difference that it completely distracts my mind.

. . .

December

John Pell
²⁵
has died. I could not persuade him to make a will, so his books and manuscripts have fallen into the hands of his son-in-law.

. . .

I have visited
²⁶
Dr Pell’s last home and rescued some letters in his own handwriting from the pies! I cannot bear to think how many letters of ingenious men have been lost at the hands of cooks who value them not.

. . .

Anno 1686

January

I am back now
²⁷
in the city from Broad Chalke, thank goodness, since my domestic troubles there are so great that I could not read or write this past six weeks, and could find no time to visit Salisbury to answer Mr Wood’s questions, which I would otherwise have willingly done! My tiger brother William and I have such great differences that I believe we will never be close again. I do not know if I shall ever shake off this grief.

. . .

February

Captain Poyntz
²⁸
has made me a grant of a thousand acres of land on the island of Tobago, for services I have done him with regard to the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Abingdon. He advises me to send over people to settle and to get subscribers to sign up for a share of this land, since he says 200 acres will be enough for me personally.

. . .

I have started composing
²⁹
a list of ideas for rescuing my fortunes.

– Obtain a patent to open the passage to make it wider for ships to come to Bristol, whereas now they come no nearer than Hungerode. Also to blow up the little island, or collection of rocks, in the key (called the Lidds?) at Bristol which occupies the room of two or three barks. Also to make obtuse the sharp angular rock at St Vincent’s which is a great nuisance to the merchants.

– Put somebody on to merging the Thames and Avon, and get a share in it.

– Obtain a patent to dig for the coal that I have discovered in Slyfiend Common in Surrey, near Guilford.

– Discover and find out the lands concealed and embezzled by the Fishmongers’ Company, which was to maintain so many scholars in Oxford and for the ease of poor Roman Catholics in Lent. Mr Fabian Philips tells me I may find out the donation in Stow’s
Survey of London
. Edmund Wylde says that the old Parliament intended to have an inspection into charitable uses.

– My discovery of the nitrous springs at Minty in Wiltshire called the Gogges (1665), where there is good fuller’s earth. I will engage Sir Edward Hungerford to help me get the ground from our friend George Pitt, Esq.

– It would be a prudent way of laying out money to build a handsome commercial house of entertainment for the water-drinkers at Seend and to make a fine bowling green etc.

– William Penn, Lord Proprietor of Pennsylvania, has given me a grant of 600 acres and advises me to plant it with French Protestants.

. . .

My friend Mr Edward Lhwyd
³⁰
, who is Dr Plot’s assistant at the Ashmolean and Register to the Chymical Course at the Laboratory, thanks me for my continual favours to the museum, but tells me that most people at Oxford do not yet know what it is. They simply call the whole building the Laboratory and distinguish no further. In fact, the museum consists of three principal rooms open to the public, each about fifty-six feet long and twenty-five broad. The uppermost room is called the Musaeum Ashmoleanum, and this is where rarities are shown to visitors; the middle room is the School of Natural History, where Dr Plot, who is Professor of Chemistry as well as Keeper of the Museum, lectures three times a week; the third room, in the basement, is the laboratory, for demonstrations and experiments.

. . .

Mr Loggan will draw
³¹
a picture of me in black and white that can be engraved for my Natural History of Wiltshire when it is printed. I also desire him to draw Wilton House so that a picture of it can be included in my book.

. . .

24 March

Today I told
³²
the Royal Society of a series of six drawings of sea battles done by Mr Hollar: the Society hopes to obtain them.

. . .

31 March

I described to the Royal Society how Sir Jonas Moore arranged for several curious observations of the tides at London Bridge to be made by means of a rod buoyed up at the bottom by a cork, so rising and falling with the water. I think the record of these observations is in the keeping of Mr Flamstead or Captain Hanway, and I will do my best to procure them for the Society.

I also mentioned
³³
that the greatest tide found on the coast of England is at Chepstow Bridge. I hope Sir John Hoskyns might pursue further investigations into that tide. Captain Collins is currently engaged in a survey of the sea coast of England, so he too could communicate his observations to the Society of the tides in various ports and headlands.

. . .

My friend Mr Paschall
³⁴
writes to tell me that our country is a pleasant land! Under his influence, Chedzoy, though close to the centre of the uprising last year, provided very few recruits for the Duke of Monmouth’s army. And yet Mr Paschall is still saddened to see the common people’s folly: many of them will not believe that the King is living, or that the late Duke of Monmouth is dead.

. . .

My good mother
³⁵
is unwell and distressed by the quarrel between me and my brother William. She is close now to the end of her life and wishes she could leave us friends.

. . .

21 April

On this day my dear and ever honoured mother died; my head is a fountain of tears. My brother William has decided my mother will be buried at Kington St Michael with my father.

. . .

May

Aside from necessary business, I have not written a word since my great grief. I have not touched my Natural History of Wiltshire since the evening of 21 April when I heard the news of my mother’s death. Earlier that day I just finished the last chapter, rough-hewn.

I am troubled
³⁶
by the death of my mother and the financial troubles that have resulted. Chalke must now be sold.

May I live
³⁷
to publish my papers. I must make haste for I am now sixty years old.

. . .

Mr Paschall tells
³⁸
of a holy day at Bridgwater (on Tuesday, 6 July) in remembrance of last year’s deliverance from the Duke of Monmouth (bells, guns, bonfires). The people there are hoping that the King, who pardoned the rebels, will welcome this voluntary act of loyalty and gratitude.

. . .

My friend Thomas Mariett
³⁹
tells me that his deceased first wife appeared to him: he is certain that if he could tell me all the circumstances, I would believe him.

. . .

18 August

I have been reflecting on the fate of manuscripts after the death of their author, and since I intend to take a journey into the west of the country soon, I have made a new will today. If I should depart this life before I return to London, I bequeath the unfinished manuscript of my Natural History of Wiltshire to my friend Mr Hooke of Gresham College. I humbly desire him to have my sketches of the noble buildings and prospects of Wiltshire engraved by my worthy friend Mr David Loggan. I signed this will today in the presence of four witnesses, one of them Mr Francis Lodwick.

. . .

Mr Paschall has described
⁴⁰
to me a case of gonorrhea in a man of sixty who has led a temperated sedentary life. He asks me to ask my friends for advice. I will send him a recipe with egg white and sugar that will help.

. . .

I have given Sir William Petty the extracts I copied out of the register books of half a dozen parishes in south Wiltshire.

. . .

8 December

Today I showed
⁴¹
the Royal Society a nautilus cast in the substance of the pyrites or vitriol stone: a brass colour, found in a chalk-pit.

In the Royal Society’s
Philosophical Transactions
for this month and last (no. 185) there is an account of the discovery of an ancient sepulchre by the River Eure at Cocherel, Rouvray, near Pacy-sur-Eure, in Normandy. Since it slightly resembles the Sanctuary at Avebury, I have inserted this account into my manuscript. I am still working on it. I will have to change the dedication since King Charles died last year. It was he who originally set me on the task of writing about Avebury, after I showed it to him in 1663. I must finish and publish if I can.

. . .

Anno 1687

February

I have begun to collect records of folk customs. I find there are many connections between the customs of classical Rome and modern England.

The Britons imbibed their Gentilisme from the Romans; and as the British language has crept into corners (like Wales and Cornwall) so the remains of Gentilisme are still kept there. I do not doubt that those customs were anciently over all Britain and Gaul; but the Inundation of the Goths drove them out, together with the language.

Quaere: How comes it to pass that while the British language is so utterly lost in England, so many Roman customs yet remain? But indeed they are most northwards, and towards Wales, while the south retains but few of them.

The Gentiles would not perfectly relinquish all their idols; so they were persuaded to turn the image of Jupiter with his thunderbolt into
Christus crucifixus
, and Venus and Cupid into the Madonna and her Babe, which Mr Thomas Hobbes said was prudently done, in his
Leviathan
.

I am reminded of my friend Thomas Browne’s critique of miracles wrought by relics in his
Religio medici
, which first opened my understanding when I was a young man.

. . .

I am embattled
⁴²
in a lawsuit with my brother William, who plagues me with letters and running up and down to lawyers. I have had no time of late to think my own thoughts, to help Mr Wood, or to work on my Natural History of Wiltshire. I need to fulfil my promise to Mr Dugdale to make my Templa Druidum fit for publication. Perhaps I can get to Oxford for three or four days in April, to paste some notes and memoranda into my collection of Lives. Meanwhile, I must move out of my lodgings near Gresham College, where I have lived these past ten years.

. . .

I have acquainted
⁴³
Sir Thomas Langton, one of the aldermen of Bristol, with my design to remove the Lidds, and he has imparted it to the common council of the city, who kindly received it, but troubles and debts come upon me and I do not think I will be able to emerge from them to fulfil my plan for reviving my fortunes.

. . .

March

Sir James Long invites me to consult him about natural history. He offers good horses from Reading to get me in three hours to Hungerford and thence to Bath.

Meanwhile he writes
⁴⁴
to me about ferns of the district, the many deer in Auburn Chase and the plants they feed on, the kinds of fish (lampreys plentiful in flood time) and birds of the district: water fowl and sea birds especially.

. . .

April